Mechanical Resonance
by Sephulbadis
Summary: The triplets want the Highwind. Only Cid knows how to fly her. It's not going to go smoothly.
1. Boarding

Cheery Note: Any mechanical engineers reading this may find aspects of the Highwind's construction counter-intuitive, implausible, or even outright humorous. This is because they are, in fact, purest bullshit. The Highwind's anatomy is based on an unholy marriage of sailboat and Joint Strike Fighter, which I'm convinced is what Square was aiming for in the first place. Happy reading!

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**Chapter 1  
**

The goddamn coolant conduit had rattled loose again. And if the goddamn coolant conduit ever came off its track it would bust in half and if it busted, then he'd have a cabin full of vaporized hadylene. That would pretty much kill everybody. If it didn't kill everybody, they'd get it when the rear turbines melted and the whole mother-loving airship went straight to hell in a ball of hot metal and chemical flame. And if anybody managed to live through _that_, somebody'd have to summon a meteor onto the unnatural sonofabitch. Much easier just to tighten the bolts on the damn thing now.

Cid pulled a screwdriver from its holster on his toolbelt, slotted the right head into it, and tried to wipe the oily grime off the big driveshaft. It connected the engines under the cockpit to the turbines, running the length of the cabin in a fat, waist-high tube casing. Grease and greasy dust blackened the top of it, with a smeared place from the last time he'd had to straddle it to reach the goddamn coolant conduit. The grime didn't come off, but he swung a leg over anyway, and braced his feet against the sides for leverage. Sure enough, a whole swath of congealed muck came off on his ass and the backs of his legs. He didn't mind, really. He wasn't one of those fancy _clean _pilots. He liked to touch his girl.

He'd never try to do this sort of repair while she wasn't grounded, though. When the big gears spun up, the driveshaft and the whole damn casing vibrated. It was supposed to do that. But when it did that while a man had one leg on either side of it, that man could come pretty close to embarassing himself through no fault of his own. It had happened once. ONCE. Never again. He liked to touch his girl, but…eh. No point letting things get all complicated.

Looked like it was a whole line of screws that needed a twist. He raised the screwdriver over his head and got to work, whistling. Maybe if he put some caulk in there afterwards, it would soften up the vibration so he didn't have to crank it down again every month.

He didn't hear the fore hatch open.

One second he was getting a screw really torqued down, the next second was a blur of motion—when the colored spots swam out of his vision, he was face-down on the driveshaft with what felt like a broken nose. The wind had been knocked right out of him, and the pressure of a heavy hand in the center of his back didn't help.

"Get off-" he wheezed, flailing the screwdriver behind his back. The angle sucked, but if he got lucky he could get a hit in and then he'd be up. There'd be hell to pay. He was sure as shit going to hurt _somebody_.

There was a flash of black to his right, and the screwdriver was gone. Then he felt his shoulders wrench down, around the shaft, and something wound too tight around his wrists, whip-quick.

"What the happy green _fuck_ is this?"

The hand still on his back gave him a couple of rough pats. More like thuds, really. "We're taking the ship," a deep, genial voice informed him. "We need it more."

"Like hell you do, get off—what are you doing?" He couldn't see a damn thing, facing toward the rear of the ship like he was, but he could feel somebody pushing his legs apart. Nobody was going to bugger him on his own ship, he'd figure out how to climb out of his own ass and kill them for it. "That's not for you, god damn it! Off!" He kicked out, but didn't connect.

Someone laughed back there. Someone different. He really didn't like the sound of it. Didn't much like it when whoever was back there twisted hell out of his knee to tie his ankles together under the driveshaft either, but at least his pants stayed on. Finally the hand on his back lifted. A trickle of blood drooled out of his nose across the casing as he yanked—nothing for it, he was trussed fore and aft. God damn it, this was insulting. He was the _captain_.

"Where's Kadaj?" That was the deep-voiced one. Why the hell couldn't either of them stand where he could see them?

"Outside. He's coming." That must be the snickering bastard who tied him down.

"Hey!" Cid snapped. "Get over here. We gotta talk."

The deep-voiced one made a rumble that was probably a laugh, but they took a few steps aft and he got a good look finally. Apparently he'd been hijacked by the Big White Nasty's brother and sister. Creepy pieces of work, all white hair and black leather. The skinny one in a skirt crouched down to check him out.

"You're bleeding." He shook a glove off and flicked a knuckle sharply across the bridge of Cid's nose. It made a hollow, gristly click and spat out a gobbet of half-clotted blood.

Cid restrained the urge to hawk a gob right across that smooth, blank face—that was something girls did. He swallowed the mess trickling down the back of his throat and mentally resolved to do what _guys_ did. Guys drop-kicked their enemies out the rear hatch.

"Get off my ship, you dogfucking arsewads. She doesn't fly for crap like you."

"She's not going to fly for _me_." The skinny one stood up. "Loz, go find the controls. I'll watch him."

"Nah, Loz, stick around!" Cid stuck his chin out defiantly, about the only gesture he could manage in his current position. "Gimme a fair fight, I'll take you both!"

"Can we?" Loz looked up and across the pipe at the other one. "Yazoo? We could give him a weapon."

"Don't. You'll break him." Cid didn't see Yazoo's mouth move, which meant there were _three_ of the bastards. Light footsteps clomped down the deck toward him. "Did he tell you how to start it yet?"

"Not yet." Yazoo stepped back and Cid saw the third one, a smirking little brat with hair hanging over most of his face.

He didn't look old enough to buy a dirty magazine, much less go around stealing people's ships. He bent down to Cid's eye level, the way the other one had. Didn't touch the nose, though. Good thing: it stung.

"Hello," said the kid, cheerfully enough. "How do I start this ship?"

Loz made an indignant sound. "Kadaj, you said I could drive-"

The smirk dropped right off the kid's face. His eyes swiveled over to Loz, and his eyebrows hitched upto disappear under the hair. "I did?"

Cid got a good look at irises the color of the Highwind's coolant. It wasn't natural, no question about it.

"Yah."

"I have no idea why. I'm driving."

"It's called _flying_," snapped Cid, "And you're not fucking doing it."

He didn't see the skinny one next to him—Yazoo—move. He didn't see a damn thing. He felt his head damn near come off, though, and heard the kid squawking something about not breaking him, the ship wasn't off the ground yet, and then he had to concentrate hard on not throwing up as his brain turned into a wad of scrambled hurt and more blood from his nose ran down his throat.

The kid bent down again. "Captain," he said, all sugar, "How do I start this ship?" He poked a finger between Cid's lips and pulled one corner up into a half-smile. "Tell me or I'll pull your spine out through your mouth."

"That doesn't even make sen-" Cid cut himself off as Kadaj flicked a look up at Yazoo. Hell, just because it was physcially impossible to pull a man's spine out through his mouth wouldn't keep somebody from trying. He figured these three would probably give it a whirl anyway. Shaking his head free of the kid's nasty molesting finger, he explained.

"Hold down the red failsafe button and turn the cipher keys on the left of the console, bottom to top."

He hoped that glove in his mouth hadn't given him anything—was the creepy-white-bastard thing contagious? "And quit fucking _touching_ me."

Kadaj disappeared behind him at once, footsteps headed straight up to the cockpit. Cid wasn't worried. When it came down to it, telling them how to fire up the Highwind wasn't going to do a damn thing. Getting her started was nothing. Getting her off the ground was the real trick, and long before they figured that out he'd have thought of some way to get off the driveshaft, fight off the other two, and take back his ship.

Yup. Any second now, he'd figure something out.

Sure thing.


	2. Ignition

There was an ugly grinding sound from underneath the cockpit. Kadaj yelled for Loz, who was gone before Cid could even blink, and he was left alone with Yazoo as the other two sounded like they were trying to get the Highwind running by breaking things until she gave in and flew.

This was his chance—he could take just one of them.

It wasn't hard to get a little driveshaft grease on the cord around his wrists; would have been hard not to. He wriggled the knots around to the palm side of his hands, where he could get a good dig on them. This was going to be easier than he thought: the skinny one wasn't even looking at him. The trick was not to look suspicious. Play it off all casual.

"Nice weather for being a real bastard," he observed. Smooth.

Yazoo didn't answer. Didn't look at him, either. He was watching the open door to the cockpit like it was a movie or something. So far so good.

"You nasty little 'bosuckers bring anything to eat? It's lunch time."

His cunning subterfuge was working perfectly, Yazoo was paying him no attention at all. He stared ahead of him, concentrating hard on the knots. It felt like one was getting looser, he'd have it off in just a second and then hell was gonna rain down on 'em but good, with blood and pain and bones sticking out—

Click.

"Don't."

...There was a gun in his ear. He cranked his eyes to the side; Yazoo still wasn't looking at him. The gun was, though. Fuck.

The engine screeched again, caught, and turned over. Somehow the freaks in the cockpit had busted the right things in the right order. He hadn't even told them about the choke gauge—small wonder she hadn't just ground her siphon alternator to hell while they tried to get her going.

"What now?" asked Yazoo. The damn gun was still poking Cid in the ear, and it didn't make him feel a bit more like detailing the rest of the Highwind's takeoff procedure.

"Nothin'."

"Nothing?"

"Yup. She's running, sure enough. Guess you smart guys can take it from here, huh?"

Cid felt the gun twitch upwards, away from his head. He knew he was pushing it and that pushing it was stupid with anybody who had eyes like that, but the Highwind wasn't built for skinny little bitchcakes who didn't know what they were doing. He'd rather get beat into a flan than live with the knowledge that his girl had a cancer like these three inside her.

Yazoo tapped the end of his gun on the driveshaft in front of his nose, which throbbed but at least had stopped bleeding. "Remind me why I won't shoot you," he suggested mildly.

"'Cause I'm so damn fancy." He was going to add some choice remarks about frilly underthings, but didn't have time before Yazoo nearly knocked his bean off with the gun again.

"Another clever answer, and Loz will do that instead." Yazoo stowed the gun. "Now, what else do we need to do to fly the ship?"

"Look, damn it—ow. OW." Cid reflexively tried to raise a hand to rub the rising lump of bruise on his head and remembered he'd never actually managed to undo the knots on his wrists. "She's vapor-locked right now anyway, you'd need a crowbar and a torch to break the seal on the first head down to the flywheel—"

"Thank you. _Kadaj!_"

The kid's head poked out of the cockpit. "Is he talking? Just kill him."

"We need a crowbar and a torch, he says."

Cid suffered a short, nasty vision of what the Highwind's undercarriage would look like if any of them got down there and started waving a crowbar and a torch around. She'd never fly again. She'd be hideous. They'd mutilate her.

"Ey," he said. "No torches, all right? There's, uh, there's lots of flammable things down there. Might blow the ship."

"You're right," Kadaj agreed. "Loz, get a crowbar."

"…or you could just pull the second lever on the right of the console to release the goddamn 'dragorashit flywheel brake."

Yazoo rested one hand on Cid's head and drummed a few fingers on the bruise inflating above his ear. "And then what?"

"And then you go straight to hell and sit on three matching fucking ant hills, that's wha—look, do _not_ hit me with that thing again, I'm warning you—"

CRACK. Dark.

Kadaj disappeared back behind the cockpit bulkhead, and Yazoo heard a clank of metal and a hiss before a faint vibration passed through the ship—that was the flywheel coming up to speed, no doubt. He set his weapon down across the pilot's back; no sense in holstering it again when the man required so much bludgeoning.

"When he wakes up," Kadaj ordered him through the door, "ask him what we're supposed to do about the stupid turbines."


	3. Takeoff

Dreams would have been nice. Dreams of flying, or Costa del Sol maybe, but the dream he most regretted not having was of a giant target painted on the ground, three individually bagged sonsabitches, and an open hatch at five thousand feet.

What he had was a headache, and no fucking wonder.

"Welcome back," said Yazoo. He was a few feet away, leaning against the bulkhead. "Kadaj wants to know about the turbines."

"Piss on you too," Cid groaned. It felt like he still had his pants on, thank the Planet for small mercies. He probably should have worried about that _before_ getting whacked, but eh. The bit about the ant hills, he was proud of that. He'd have to remember it and use it again.

Sounded like they'd made some progress while he was out—they'd gotten the flywheel spun up, but that still wouldn't mean shit unless they'd figured out the clutch.

"You're smiling," Yazoo noted. "I assume there's something we should know."

"Just being friendly," Cid reassured him, cranking as much bullshit into a smile as he could manage with his head and his nose still hurting so much. "You haven't hit me for a good minute and a half, I figure we're damn near dating now."

Yazoo gave him a look that he knew for sure he didn't like. It wasn't the _'I'm going to hit you again'_ look, he'd gotten a pretty good handle on that one already and this wasn't it. This one looked like _'that's an interesting idea'_. And of course he was doing that smirk thing.

"You think so?"

Shit. He shouldn't have even joked about the potential of a romantic interlude, in his current position. But he could handle it, he was all over it, things were fine. He was going to get out of this jam, live to be an old, old man, and he was going to look his great-grandkids in the eye and tell them that no, his ass had never so much as been touched by some fancy mako _truffle_.

Maybe he wouldn't actually tell them that. But he wanted to be able to think it, anyway.

He'd been telling himself ever since these three snakes got on his goddamned airship that he'd have a plan any second—maybe it was all the cracks to the head that had finally knocked things into place, but that second was now. All he had to do was get into the cockpit and vent the fuel tanks. She'd be useless. Then he could probably get something non-vital in the back chassis to fail in a distracting way, and hey fucking presto. It wasn't a fancy plan but it ought to save most of the Highwind at least, and he should be able to preserve the structural integrity of his own happy self long enough to get the hell off.

"Look, hey. I tell you what. Lemme up off this thing and I'll get her flying for you."

Yazoo didn't seem to have heard him, he was staring at the cockpit again. The other two weren't talking, up there, but they were doing something to the controls that seemed to be confusing the hell out of the Highwind. Cid couldn't see a damn thing, facing aft the way he was.

"Hey. You hear me? I said I'd fly."

"I heard you. No." Yazoo drifted over and plucked the long-barreled gun from where it rested on Cid's back, close at hand in the likely case that Cid required Yazoo to hit him again.

"You want to get this boat off the ground or not?"

"Hn," said Yazoo, which Cid figured might mean yes. He was awfully absorbed by whatever the hell he was watching up front.

"Great. Then let me get off this fucking pipe."

Cid felt a hand on the back of his neck, tickling the short bristles at his nape. Planet's sweet mercy, he was going to set the bastard on fire before he chucked him out the hatch just for being so _touchy_ all the goddamned time.

"Things seem to be going well with you where you are," Yazoo said, in a way that made Cid want to kick himself again for mentioning that dating thing.

"You won't be thinking that when the vapor shunt blows everything to hell," Cid snapped. The Highwind's prototype had had a manual vapor shunt, but she had an automatic one now—he'd made damn sure of that after he'd forgotten to open the shunt in time and taken out the back wall of the test hangar. Didn't matter. The Sephiroth Variety Hour here didn't even know basic shit like brakes. There was no way in hell they'd be able to call bull on his shunts.

That seemed to get Yazoo's interest, at least enough to make him stop fondling. Good start.

"Yeah," Cid continued. "You got the flywheel going, but I can't hear the shunt venting and after the flywheel starts you got about two minutes before the pressure spikes and the whole goddamn engine just farts itself out the back of the ship. It'll take more time to tell you how to fix than we got. Lemme up."

_Well slung_, he told himself. _Well slung indeed._

It seemed like Yazoo was buying it, mostly because he hadn't hit Cid again. A few seconds passed, fingers drummed once on the back of his neck, and then he was face-to-face with the dainty little shit and god damn it he was going to do something perverted, wasn't he?

A low whirring roar kicked in from both sides of the cabin, and got loud in a hurry. _Holy creeping fuck on toast, they figured out the turbines._

Yazoo blinked once, slowly, and ducked down to work on the greasy knots around Cid's wrists first.

Sure enough, the turbine pitch rose as the big gears started to synch up with the flywheel speed. The first one settled into lockstep right away, and the driveshaft gave a shimmy under him. The second didn't take much longer, and everything got a jostle when it caught. The third one, the really big one, took a couple seconds after that just like it should, and _why the deep-fried hell couldn't the skinny sonsabitch untie just a little bit faster?_

The third gear caught, and the entire cabin _hummed_. Most especially it hummed right through the driveshaft, the casing of which Cid was deeply dismayed to still have his legs around. He decided he'd rather be dead. He'd rather be in hell. He'd rather be in a goddamn budget meeting. Anything had to be better than being molested by his own ship while Precious Snowflake #2 was right there. Right there, waiting for any excuse to do _things_ to him. He could tell.

Things were already getting kinda…fidgetty down there. Oh, this wasn't good.

Deep breath, now. There was nothing freaky about this, it was a simple case of mechanical resonance and bad luck. Anybody with a functioning set would be having the same problem. Nothing he could do about it, and most importantly it wasn't his goddamn fault that it was rapidly getting uncomfortable to be lying on his front. It was time to focus on the really important shit now, like not letting anyone touch his junk. Plan B: same as Plan A, but faster and hunched over. No sweat.

Snowflake was taking his damn time with the knots. "Clock's tickin'," Cid reminded him. He didn't sound distracted, 'course he didn't. His was not the voice of a man with his girl's metaphorical hand down his pants. All business. Oh yes.

"One of the knots was almost loose," Yazoo said, sitting back on his heels. "That's fixed."

"I told you, we probably got about half a minute now!"

"Mm-hm. Two minutes after the flywheel starts, the ship dies. Is that what you said?"

"Close e-fucking-nough! Get me off this thing!"

"Two minutes?"

"More like twenty seconds now, but yeah!" Cid found it was all too easy to get the proper tone of growing desperation into his voice. It was much, much harder not to squirm around.

Yazoo stood, rested a hand lightly on Cid's shoulder, and waited. Cid counted off the seconds in his head, but simple counting wasn't enough distraction to keep blood from going where it wasn't goddamn needed.

…twenty seconds. The engine didn't blow, of course. The cabin tilted, then flattened out again, and Cid knew the Highwind was hovering shakily a few feet above the ground.

"_Shit,_" he said, with feeling. The turbines were still running, the driveshaft still doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and it was getting very difficult to think properly.

"You look worried," Yazoo murmured. "You shouldn't. Kadaj released the brake before I hit you. After I hit you, do you know what happened?"

"Nng."

"You laid there and bled. Slowly. For almost ten minutes."

Cid managed another 'nng', really eloquent, and did _not_ let his legs twitch. He knew his face was red and he could feel a thin sweat starting on his forehead, but if he was lucky, Snowflake would just figure he was scared. Coming off as a wuss was much, much better than the sonofabitch guessing how close he was to achieving the unholy union of man and machine here.

_Think of ugly women think of ugly women ugly women in showers very cold showers full of very ugly women…_

The hand on Cid's shoulder lifted, and Cid heard Yazoo wander to the fore a few steps. He felt something brush lightly against the back of his leg, but not his ass—thank the Planet, nobody was touching his ass. And then something drummed on the casing.

"Hm." he heard, and then the bastard drifted back into sight. He crouched down so Cid could see him, and if that nasty smile had been on his face just a minute earlier, Cid thought it might have done some good to discourage his junk. No luck now.

"I imagine that's very distracting," said Yazoo, tucking a pair of fingers under Cid's chin. "Are you enjoying it?"

Cid squinted his eyes shut. "Fuck. You." Under the casing, his knuckles crackled as he clenched his fists. Beating Snowflake's face to pulp, _that_ would be a sexually gratifying experience he'd be happy to share.

Something metal went _twang_.

The ship yawed sharply, the cabin floor abruptly jerking up to damn near fifty degrees of pitch and shit flying all over the place, his screwdriver nearly took his eye out as it sailed past and Snowflake went ass over teakettle straight into the port wall before bouncing off it like a jai'alai ball straight into the cockpit and holy sweet Planet it was enough just not to have the sonofabitch standing there watching him it was all right now…

He barely heard the crunch of the Highwind's sloppy landing, first on her side and then slapping down onto her belly. More metal busted, somewhere, and the kid in the cockpit was throwing a fit and he didn't actually give a shit somehow.

The turbines ticked to a stop. He was sprawled on his side, half-under the casing, with a rapidly cooling mess between his legs and his nose had started up bleeding again. The knots were still tight, but some digging should have them loose again, just like last time. And now there was nobody to hit him, hey! Life was good.

…or not. All three of the bastards were coming out of the cockpit. The kid was in front looking like he wanted to chew the head right off something, and the other two were just lurking back there behind him, kinda being…glowy.

Kadaj just _looked_ at the port hatch, which was well and truly mangled, and the big one came up and just peeled it off like the top off a can. He stepped out first, then Yazoo followed him—and the goddamn slugfucking sonsagoat bastard SMIRKED at Cid as he left, there was no mistaking it. That left the kid.

"Nice flying," Cid told him. Hey, he couldn't not.

"We'll be back in six months," Kadaj told him, disappearing out the hatch. "Build one that works."

* * *

Note: Thus the tawdry saga concludes! There will be one last chapter, an epilogue if you will, but don't stay up waiting for "Six Months Later"--there was this thing that happened with Cloud, and Rufus, and Jenova's head, and Sephiroth was there...anyway, suffice to say the airship thing kinda fell by the wayside. Thanks for reading:) 


	4. Grounded

"..and that's why all the airships have eye scanners on the ignition now." Cid sat back in his chair, grinning, trying to ignore the crackling of his back. Getting old was shit, but getting _really_ old meant a whole horde of great-grandkids who had to listen to him run his mouth off. That was the good part.

"Yay! You beat the bad guys!" That was Jonu. Little suck-up, he'd never amount to anything.

"Damn right I did."

One of the red-headed ones spoke up, and Cid had to think hard to remember which one he was. Wedge or something? "But…couldn't you just cut off somebody's head for the eye thing? I saw people do that in a movie once."

"No you can't, you _stupid_. The pupil dilates after you die 'cause it's a muscle and you're _dead_." Heh. Wedge was getting told off by one of the girls. Mina. She'd grow up to be one of those really sharp broads, he figured.

"Nobody cares about things like that and _you're_ stupid." Wedge stuck his tongue out at Mina, and Mina stuck hers right back.

"Pull those back in or you'll get flies landing on 'em," Cid scolded.

One of the smaller ones wobbled up and pulled on his sleeve. He had no clue whose kid she was, or what her name was, but one of the other nice things about being old as hell was that nobody expected him to remember a goddamn thing.

"Grampa," she chirped. Aw, cute. "Was it really Seff…Seffimu…Sethimoth? On your ship?"

Cid made a mess out of the kid's hair, and she giggled. "Pretty much. One of 'em turned into Sephiroth. That was later, though."

"_I_'m going to turn into Sephiroth when I grow up," Wedge announced proudly.

"Me too!" said Mina.

"Well, next time he comes back maybe you can talk to him and work something out."

That sent most of the kids into a giggling fit and it didn't take long for them to start chasing each other around making monster noises and then get in a full-on clan war about who got to be Sephiroth this time and who got to be the princess.

Cid watched them tear around the house, folded his arms over his chest, and smiled a broad, contented smile. He'd known this was going to happen, sure enough. It wasn't the sort of thing you could say to little kids without being branded a pervert, and anyway they wouldn't understand how big a deal it was, but he could _think_ it. And he did—really, really loudly.

Not _one_ of those sons of bitches had ever touched his ass.

**FIN!**


End file.
